If innovation is so great, why don’t more companies do it?
While gurus proclaim “Innovate or die,” the truth is many companies get along fine without it and still others do their best to avoid it. Innovation isn’t always profitable. If it were, corporations would always pursue it, which they clearly do not.
However, innovation is important for the rest of us, which is why we need to encourage and protect it.
While the emergence of Social Media has been amazing, much of the talk surrounding Social Media has become divorced from reality. Social Media is, and will most probably continue to be, a small (albeit important) part of the overall marketing picture.
Unfortunately, the way Social Media is being hyped will probably do more harm than good – a backlash is inevitable.
Many people believe that it is important to develop a standard audience metric for the internet. GRP’s have worked for TV, what should replace them on the web? In fact, nothing needs to.
The rationale for a standard metric stems from the perception that one standard works very well for offline media, is what advertisers expect and if interactive media could produce a single standard it would attract more ad dollars. This is clearly a misperception about how media is bought and sold.
Imagine what would happen if we couldn’t encrypt our information. Nothing we do electronically would be safe. Hackers could run up our phone bills, buy things on our account or just simply steal all of our money and not bother with the rest.
Therefore, it is troubling – to say the least – that encryption we now consider “unbreakable” will be broken routinely in as little as a decade or so from now.
Rupert Murdoch, in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, once again proclaimed the advertising business model dead and the era of free content over.
There is no doubt that Murdoch is an astute business man. He has made a fortune in media, much of it in tabloids and by cozying up to dictatorships in countries such as China and Russia. He cynically titled the piece that he published in his own newspaper to further his business interests, “Journalism and Freedom.”
Generally speaking, I’m a fan of Murdoch. They say, “you can’t argue with success” and I usually don’t, nor do I want to. However, in this latest episode his reasoning is so divorced from the facts that I have doubts as to whether he’s really serious.
Digital media is being pulled in two different directions. Branded content, produced by professionals and distributed by corporations, is increasingly being made available online. At the same time, consumers themselves are producing their own content in astonishing quantity and, sometimes, quality as well.
The two forces seem diametrically opposed, can they be reconciled? For either to survive, they will need to be.
In our web enabled, data driven society, intuition is making a comeback. Paragons of the corporate world such as Jack Welch (who titled his memoir Straight from the Gut) are hailed not just for their success, but their readiness to bet on their instincts. Conversely, politicians are reviled if they are perceived to govern by opinion polls.
The idea that intuition prevails over data is comforting; a triumph of man over machine. However, the reality is more complicated. We certainly don’t admire everybody’s instinct, just those whose decisions pay off. One who makes the leap and fails is not a hero, but a fool.
Digital Media, and especially Social Media, are obsessed by metrics and ROI. While there are few standards, there are lots of ideas and theories.
An immense amount of energy and investment is being expended to develop new and better methods of measurement in order to prove to advertisers that they are getting a return on their investment. However, one model which is often overlooked is that of the billboard industry.
Is it possible to predict the future? Apparently, Richard Feynman could.
He dreamed up some of the today’s most exciting technologies, like nanotech and quantum computing, decades ago. Moreover, these weren’t mere daydreams or flashes of inspiration; he foresaw how they would actually work, what problems would have to be overcome, etc.
Although regarded by many adoring scientists as a ‘magician,” Feynman wasn’t clairvoyant and there was no mystery surrounding his work. He followed clear principles that we can all follow.
Everybody negotiates. Some people like it, others hate it but all agree that the ability to negotiate well is a valuable business skill and therefore it’s something worth doing well.
To be successful in negotiations, you have to be tough, but it also helps to have a strategy. Fortunately, Game Theory provides us with insights that can lead to practical results.
